


kingfisher

by soliloquium



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Gay, Slight Humor, and adora tries too hard, catra finds out Adora's identity ono, catra is a shit as per usual, emoting, hero! adora, obviously, unhealthy relationships? possibly, villain! catra, villlain x hero au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 16:34:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21851329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soliloquium/pseuds/soliloquium
Summary: you are fifteen feet under water. you are drowning//Catra is a villain. Adora is a hero. They are in love. Things could not be less simple.
Relationships: Adora/Catra (She-Ra)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 112





	kingfisher

**Author's Note:**

> I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,  
> some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.  
> I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
> 
> —Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture  
> I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident  
> the art of losing’s not too hard to master  
> though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.  
> \- Elizabeth bishop

All it took was one split second realization for Catra’s world to implode on her. Her house of memories burnt to the ground, all smoldering ash of anger and regret. All the photographs dipped in dye. 

It took a few seconds to mourn, to let the facts sink in, to recolor her view. 

And when she came to, she realized there were shards of glass on the linoleum. 

Fuck.

”You’re so clumsy, Catra, Jesus,” Adora chirped, swooping in, like she always did, fond and yet condescending, “You’re the reason we don’t buy glass cups anymore.”  
  
Catra nodded, distant. It all fit, like a fucking puzzle piece. Like the punchline to a joke that god had made just to screw her over in just one more way. 

There was gash on Adora’s arm. Catra could still feel it, the scrape of skin under her sharp nails as she tore into She-Ra like paper. Upper fore-arm, on the soft inlay, starting right at the edge of her palm.   
  
There was a gash on She-Ra’s arm.   
  
She-Ra and Adora. The two were one, melted into each other. 

(Catra continued helping with dinner, cutting carrots at snails pace. She didn’t have the capacity to do anything except move her hand up and down and up and down onto the cheap plastic as her mind battled a whirlwind)  
  
The curve of her lips, arched precisely at the Cupid’s bow, her meandering of her cheeks, the powerful way she laughed, saturated in femininity. 

Her fucking sanctimony. (Adora had never once cheated on a test in grade school. Not even math. Not even when Catra had offered. Not even during their exam. And Adora has sucked at math.)  
  
But her hair had been longer, lighter as She-Ra, her eyes had glimmered a shinning, obnoxious blue. Adora didn’t have those types of muscles or height; Adora had just been Adora; compact and normal with an over bearing moral compass and her terrible, terrible dad jokes.   
  
“Are you okay?” When Catra looked up, she was met with a face that had consideration written all over it. A warm face that Catra had caressed, kissed, fucked, fought with. 

Catra grabbed her form without looking up, “‘m fine.”  
  
”You don’t look fine.”  
  
”Cool.”  
  
”What have we said about emoting- you need to use your words to communicate, Catra, I can’t just tell what you’re thinking, you know, I’m no mind reader.”  
  
_No, but you are a liar._ “Interesting.”  
  
”Are you mad at me- is this about whether or not we use my /one week a year/ of vacation time to go see Cats: the musical on Broadway when a movie with Taylor Swift already exists and-“  
  
”I thought you _just_ said you couldn’t mind read. And Cats the Movie’s animation is demonic and wrong. Even if it _does_ star Taylor Swift.”  
  
”Oh, look, it doesn’t suffer from Aphasia-“  
  
”You’ve been lying to me.”  
  
Adora blinked, there was the split second of fear, that slackening of the mouth, that very Adora-Feels-Guilty-Face, and Catra knew. 

”What’re you talking about?” She asked, trying to laugh but her voice coming out shrill and nervous. 

“How’d you hurt your arm.”  
  
”I told you as I got home-duh- that Bow’s new machine went haywire and that...”  
  
”I know,” Catra cut in, her voice blank with seething anger, “don’t even try.”  
  
Catra’s mind spiraled again- so, then, had Adora known about Catra, too? For the last year or so, Catra could count on one hand the amount of times she’d been explicitly injured on a mission and that number added up to a nefarious zero- and it wasn’t like She-Ra couldn’t; the toppled trees and cars left in the wreckage in the aftermaths if their fights were indicated enough. 

”I didn’t want you to find out this way,” Adora began, reaching out to grasp Catra’s hand over the plates of mash potatoes and their carefully chintz table cloth because, all buff lesbian things considered, Adora really really liked patterned flowers. 

The domesticity coupled with the the betrayal of Adora’s bandage made Catra’s eye twitch.  
  
”So how did you want me to find out, huh, when was the _appropriate_ time to tell me that we were fucking mortal enemies?!”  
  
”There wasn’t one! But I figured, through Adora, through this, through _us_ , I could get you to stop-I made you watch a lot of SU to try show you that bad guys are _bad_ -“  
  
”You tried to convert me via a cartoon?!”  
  
“I hadn’t meant for you to find out this way- I was going to tell you, I swear, until I found your costume in the wash and it just. It made everything so much more complicated- I didn’t want this to break us.”  
  
”You didn’t want us to break up so you thought this was a good idea?! Having us fight - life or death- and coming home to cuddling in front of fucking _Queer Eye_?!”  
  
”I didn’t have another choice, Catra.”  
  
”My ass, you didn’t.”  
  
”I need you,” Adora put her hands to her face, dejected in her surrender.  
  
”You have Glimmer and Bow,” Catra dismissed. 

”They’re not you though- it’s different. This isn’t even about romance or sex or sharing a shitty apartment- I need you in my life Catra. You’re the only person I can be less than perfect with, the only one who jokes about my flaws and my weaknesses because you _know_ them- and I know you! Everyone else- they’re a maze and I’m. I’m not good with directions- you _know_ I’m not and you’ve always been familiar, you’ve been home, I could make fun of you and tickle you and kiss you because it just can’t do naturally to me. It’s visceral- whenever other people are around I have this innate need to stand up straight and alert but with you, it’s. I’m. Safe. Your skin makes me feel safe.”

Catra knew that voice; Adora was cracking, concrete stature crumbling. She'd only used it a number of times before (going to the adoption center to look up the names of their her birth parents only to find blanks in the documents, loosing their first rowing match as captain of the team, their first break up). Their was a keen sense of power of being the 'one and only' to see someone break, to be the only person capable of shattering. Reducing Adora took many, many things; a lifetime of intimacy for one. 

Now what did it take to reduce She-Ra?

  
Catra stood staring at the wall. A shitty little crack in the paint that had occurring when moving in, Catra jostling Adora with a big, book laden box. All of their scars were like that crack, they belonged to each other. 

”You’re not safe.”  
  
Adora stood up, “Catra, /please/, we can find away, you can change sides-“  
  
”And neither am I. Not here. Not with you.”  
  
The potatoes were cold now. Adora’s bandage began to turn pink; it needed changing. 

  
But all the books were in their places, the duvet was crumpled on Catra’s side because she liked to hog blankets, there were two toothbrushes in the cup in their 4 by 5 foot bathroom. 

And yet the door closed. Adora listened to the the gentle foot falls across the apartments hallway until they disappeared. And she knew she would never hear it again.   
  


**Author's Note:**

> not my best work but ya boy tried ;P need something to get out of my writing slump and these two have an ACHING dynamic. sad there wasn't a lot of interaction this season but we got DT so ... evens out?
> 
> Feeling frisky... might continue this later on ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


End file.
